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How to Start Small Scale Local Publicity?

This is part seven of the interview series I did with Jaguar Bennett, Publicity and Marketing Director for Linden Publishing.

Jaguar: First would be if you have a local group of authors. I come from a small town, and where I come from, people are just fascinated with anyone in their locality who is writing. People are always interested in the hometown team. They are interested in their area. If you can organize a group of writers of the upper peninsula or whatever your region is, that alone develops some solidarity, some press, because here are some people who are doing their own work from their own perspective. Then that is something you can publicize yourself. You can get a small group and have a reading or put out a literary publication.

If you are a nonfiction writer and you are a subject matter expert, there are all different kinds of things you can do. Holding conferences, teaching classes at adult schools, seminars and conferences, everything you can do to communicate what it is that you know about and how that has value for people, is a way of promoting your books.

One thing I would strongly emphasize is – it is not so much what opportunities are out there and how do you find them, it is more what opportunities can you create and are you willing to create them?

One thing I strongly recommend is a kind of punk rock do-it-yourself mentality. If you want there to be a writers conference in your town, start one. If you want to speak somewhere, create an event for yourself.

But that being said, there are also a great many resources out there. There are writers groups you can join, even regional ones or larger ones. On the Internet, there are ways of communicating with other groups, even if you live in a terribly isolated area. You'd like to start a group called: "Writers of the Northern Yukon," but you are the only one out there. There are ways to find out about your interest.

Do you write murder mysteries? Do you write romance? Do you write nonfiction on a particular topic? Find people who are in your niche. On the Internet, you can carve out your own territory that way.

Start your own literary magazine. Start your own virtual conference. One of the things I like about your site, BellaOnline.com, is that you have got that kind of focus. You have a particular audience in mind, you are looking at a particular kind of person, at a particular stage in their life, wanting to do particular things. You know, that is how you get together with your people, your tribe.

Nonfiction writing is exciting because it includes so many areas: personal, biography, academic, essay, persuasion, how-to, religious, and more. Join us in the climb to excel in our writing so that what we write has the best impact possible.